BATAC CITY, Ilocos Norte— Be proud you are a farmer. Yes, for local residents here, they take pride of their farmers. These hardworking men and women who wake up early every day, feed the soil to nourish the plants in order to provide food for the community.
So, on the first week of May each year, the city government of Batac hosts a weeklong festivity dedicated to all productive farmers here who are responsible in transforming the city’s modern agricultural landscape.
With the all-out support of various government research and technology institutions that nurtured farmers’ education, training and application of right technology and adoption of the latest trends on sustainable agriculture, the Batac farmers take the lead across the province and the country in terms of producing high-value commercial crops, including major staples, like rice, corn and tobacco.
Over the past eight years, the Batac City government, under the administration of Mayor Jeffrey Jubal Nalupta, carries on with the farmers’ festival as a form of thanksgiving for the abundant blessings of the agricultural lands here.
For a self-made farmer-millionaire like Romeo Ganiron, a national outstanding rice farmer in Barangay San Mateo, Batac City, his face lit up every time he goes to the farm, feeding his native chickens, pigs, goats, African hito and tilapia, while he also harvest assorted fruits and vegetables, such as watermelon, tissue-cultured bananas, lettuce, tomatoes, pepper, squash and eggplant among other edible vines, flowering plants and mahogany trees that surround his 1.76-hectare farm estate.
While he is also engaged in mushroom culture and vermiculture, Ganiron attests that farmers can do so much if they are open to change, follow the right mix of technology and work hard for it.
His son, John Lei, 27, a professional engineer, also joined him in farming, as the latter is also engaged in hydroponics, a method of growing plants using mineral-nutrient solutions the father and son coproduce and experiment.
The Ganiron family, and along with other farmers here are happy of the latest farming development in Batac. A trip at the largest open public market of Batac City shows farmers’ abundance, where traders from neighboring province,s including Metro Manila, directly transact with them.
As a priority program of Batac since it became a city, farmers get the most out of their produce, as the city government allocated at least 1 million each for the city’s 43 villages. This paves the way for the remarkable transformation of rural barangays in the form of concrete farm-to-market roads, improvement of agricultural infrastructure and better facilities.
Following the kick-off ceremony on Monday, the weeklong festivity highlights the best of the best produce of farmers here through its pinaka crops and fisheries competition, cookfest, carosa floats parade, carabao parade, display of farm machineries, 40-kilogram palay relay, fruits and vegetable carving, and catching of native piglet and chicken in blindfolds.